ASOT 450 NYC

Wow, what an weekend… the NY crowd really knows how to get down! On Saturday night, Armin van Buuren hosted the 3rd party of his ASOT 450 tour at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan, NY. The lineup included: Breakfast, Lange, Giuseppe Ottaviani, John O’Callaghan, Filo & Peri, and Alex MORPH. My friends and I arrived relatively early, making sure we got the best choice of VIP tables on the balcony level. We posted up almost dead center to the stage, so we got a pretty sweet view of the entire dancefloor. The night progressed very well, with each act playing harder and harder sets. Breakfast opened it up pretty chill, playing hits like Slow Motion and Los Angeles. Lange built it up futher with the original version of his Out of the Sky, Under Pressure, and the fitting This is New York. GO then followed with a surpringly hard set. He was also playing live on a keyboard along with two laptops, adding points to his performance. I am a fan of his work, but I didn’t expect for him to play so many hard-hitters. His set included great versions of We Are One, Our Dimension, and Out of the Blue. Next up was Armin, and he played out a very nice 2 hour set. Highlights for me included his opening track, Arty’s remix of Reverse: Absolute Reality, Control Freak, Miss You, Super 8 & Tab’s remix of New York City, and the new mashup On Off of Love. The crowd was really into the entire set, and I don’t believe anyone left the room during that time. JOC then proceded to steal the show, playing his usual top notch mix. This was my second time hearing him, and he definitely lived up to his performance the first time. It was seriously banger after banger, resulting in one of the best sets I have ever heard live. JOC has easily cemented himself as one of my top 5 producing DJs. Filo & Peri surprised me as well, but maybe because I wasn’t expecting much from them. Their productions are usually whatever, but their live set was very good. However they did play Anthem, which is a song I loathe very much, but they made up for it by playing Drops of Jupiter and For an Angel. We didn’t stay for the entire set by Alex, but his tracklist was pretty solid as well.

Overall the night was a complete success. It was definitely worth the cross country trip to attend this party. The production was good, the tunes were amazing, but the time flew by way too fast. How does this event compare to ones I have attended in the past? One thing that I noticed was that almost everybody was standing and dancing. There were no e-puddles or cuddle puddles, no holes in the middle of the dance floor, and a very limited number of lights, photons, and other raver paraphernalia. Everyone was completely focused on the music, which I respect immensely. I don’t know if this was due to the show being very genre specific (limited to trance only), or if the crowd was mostly alcoholics, but I much prefer this type of party environment. Don’t get me wrong, the rave scene in Cali is one of a kind; nowhere else in the world will you see so many fucked up kids in one place. But, as my clubbing experience has grown and my musical taste has been refined, I have started to really affiliate myself with the true trance fans. Sure, anyone can enjoy the music being played, but I felt like the appreciation was much more obvious at the ASOT party. The crowd was one I could definitely plug into, and this further improved the overall vibe of the night.

Here are two of the videos I took from that night, both were recorded in AVCHD and then converted to mp4 format. I will upload more once I have more time to do so. The quality isn’t perfect after the youtube upload, but I think you get the point. Make sure you load the video in HD quality. Here is Armin’s intro (look how happy he is!):